Camus' "L'Étranger" has the title translated as "The Outsider" in the English version by Stuart Gilbert (1946), while "The Stranger" is the title for the American translation by Matthew Ward (1988).
The choice is a particular interpretative decision by the translators.
Readers of Camus, even in the American translation, will not be very typical. They are, as educated people in an anti-intellectual society, almost certainly (unless themselves lacking any emotional processing) used to being alienated from the brutal, exceptionalist, zero-sum game, thuggery that passes for 'Normal', there, so 'The Stranger' might be kinder to them, since strangers can be redeemed by becoming known, unlike Meursault, as an alien, a threatening "Other" to be rejected, aligning with the national psyche of exceptionalism and xenophobia.
Whilst 'outsider' is more accurate, it'd be cruel to emphasise it. It implicitly criticises the group that does the outsiding. It forces the reader to consider the mechanisms of exclusion and their own role within them. This is perhaps a more socially reflexive and self-critical position, chiming more readily with English literary sensibilities.
The redemptive possibility that strangers can be redeemed by becoming known offers a glimmer of hope, however faint. It implies a journey, a potential for bridging a gap. It frames Meursault's condition not as a fixed social status, "outsider", but as a problem of understanding and communication. This is a fundamentally less devastating, and perhaps more palatable, framework for a reader who already feels on the margins, alienated.
In France, "un étranger" is, first and foremost, a foreigner - someone from another country, without French citizenship. This injects a colonial and social tension, before the first page is turned.
The murder of the Arab man by Meursault, a Frenchman, is hugely significant. The Frenchman is the étranger in the title, yet he is the one with power. The title is thus deeply ironic and critical of colonial society.
The French reader understands that Meursault is an étranger to the human condition itself.
He is a stranger to common emotional language. He doesn't understand its rituals (grief, love, repentance) and is therefore alien and incomprehensible to it.
He is an outsider because this failure to perform emotions excludes him from the human community. He is judged and ejected for his otherness.
The title, in French, is not a label for Meursault alone. It is a question posed to the reader and to society. It challenges the categories of "insider" and "outsider," "native" and "foreigner," "normal" and "alien."
In essence, while the English translations force a single interpretation ("The Stranger" or "The Outsider"), the original French title is the central philosophical problem of the book itself. It is a richer, more complex, and more accusing title than either of its English counterparts.
For the French reader, "L'Étranger" is a concise and devastating critique of social, colonial, and existential hypocrisy.
A better English title might have been 'The Foreigner', and, maybe, in the US, 'The Resident Alien'.
